How Business Apps are Helping Enterprise Organizations Save Money

Mobile apps for business: it seems every day there’s a new one. They cover all sorts of areas, from calendars to networking. But can business apps really help an enterprise save a quantifiable amount of money? In streamline data collection? They can save enterprises thousands, if not millions of dollars.

Cost of Paper

The lifetime expense of paperwork can be staggering. Not only are you buying paper, printers, and ink, but also filing cabinets and space to store those files. The state government of North Dakota calculated the cost of a filing cabinet. The average annual cost of a cubic foot? $291. How much space does your enterprise use for paper storage?

By switching to business apps, you could save hundreds of dollars in the cost of storage alone. You can free up the spaces used for paper storage for more offices or meeting rooms. Mobile app subscriptions include cloud storage as part of the deal, often letting you store as much as you want without extra cost.

Of course, your savings will go further. Paper forms also cost you in ink, depreciation of printers and scanners from heavy use. All of these materials will last longer because you will use them less. All of these will add up to even more money saved.

Faster Inspections

You can speed up your processes, and stay safe (Nathan E Photography, source)

In almost every industry, inspections are a part of the business. Whether you check manufacturing equipment or retail store fire alarms, these inspections protect your enterprise. Still, inspections take time, and keep your workers from other important tasks.

What if you could make inspections go faster? Business apps can help streamline your inspections. With drop down lists, auto-populated fields, in app calculations, and easy photo capture, inspections that once took thirty minutes now take five. Mobile apps like expense reports will ensure you get quality data, but also free your employees to do more work in the same amount of time.

No More Double Data Entry

How much do you spend on data entry? For every employee devoted to it, you’re spending $29,000-40,000 dollars a year. If you have just 5 people focused on data entry, you could be spending up to $200,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to manually enter data into your system.

With mobile apps, you enter the data once and you’re done. No more hours spent entering the data a second time, or wondering what Paul wrote on the form. Every submission goes immediately to the cloud for real time access. Even better: you can seamlessly integrate the data into your own systems. Every submission will end up in your database, where you need it.

What can you do with an extra five workers? What would you do with an additional $200,000 lying around? Business apps free you from that data entry burden, so you can go further.

Improve Communication

In a large company, communication is key to make sure not only do teams work well together, but also departments and your entire company. Sure there’s email, phone, and radio, but it can be hard to communicate in real time when some of your workforce is in the field. It could be hours or days for paperwork to get back to your office. Even if you report over phone or radio, it takes extra time to transcribe that information.

Mobile apps allow real time communication and sharing knowledge. That instantaneous access to submissions in the cloud removes the time lag. So, if there is a safety issue on site, your office can know and respond in minutes, not hours or days later.

But the communication improves from office to field as well. You can also send dispatches via mobile apps to field workers. From where they need to go, to job type, your office can send clear directions easily. By improving dialogue in both directions, your office and field teams work together as one cohesive unit.

Communication problems can affect business bottom lines. Work moves more slowly, and makes projects take longer and become more expensive. Poor communication can also affect worker retention (and we all know the cost of getting a new employee up to speed). While it may be harder to quantify, working together efficiently will make your business faster, more productive.